THE POLICE ARE LYING

The police are lying about ‘domestic violence’ and the World Cup – again.

Two years ago CCN exposed how a Devon and Cornwall police claim that men beat their wives more on Valentine’s Day wasn’t just a nasty lie – it was the opposite of the truth.

In fact – as the BBC to their belated credit eventually reported themselves – reports of violence in the home went down on Valentine’s Day.

Then the police put out false propaganda claiming ‘DV’ increased during Euro 2014.

This too was a fabrication – the police never explained or apologised for spreading these malicious lies demonising men, and their press office never answered any of CCNs apposite questions about their story.

Now with the World Cup on our lying police are at it again.

This time the ludicrous Guardian newspaper are slavishly repeating the police’s lies, as usual employing no journalistic scrutiny of any kind, and further contibuting to the deep public scepticism about UK news reporting in general.

Nick Langford has written a comprehensive expose of how lying misandrists propagate venomous hate-speech against men every major sporting event, and the media lap up the false statistics and print it as news.

Year after year the lies are repeated and despite real journalists and enalysts often subsequently exposing them, the police, the BBC, and establishment press in general keep churning it out.

Don’t believe it. Don’t believe anything you read in the papers until you’ve checked it all out yourself.

This tiresome myth that men attack their wives and girlfriends habitually gets wheeled out of retirement every time there is a major sporting event.

It began in California in 1993 when a coalition of women’s groups held a press conference claiming Superbowl Sunday was ‘the biggest day of the year for violence against women’.

The evidence was an alleged 40% increase in reports of beatings and hospital admissions in northern Virginia after games won by the Redskins during the 1988/89 season.

Wives and girlfriends were advised not to remain at home during the game; NBC even aired a public service announcement!

But – when Ken Ringle, a Washington Post journalist, investigated the story – he found the original report was simply made up.

The researchers, led by professor of sociology and criminal justice Janet Katz, had not found the 40% increase claimed.

Other reports of increased admissions to women’s shelters and calls to help-lines proved to be fabricated.

The alleged source of the claim, Professor Patrick Ewing, said he’d never made it and didn’t have the data to make a judgement.

Ringle found no evidence at all to support the assertion.

Undeterred, UK women’s groups claimed a 30% increase in domestic violence every time England played during the 2006 World Cup.

The BBC and other news outlets dutifully reported the story.

The ‘evidence’ derived from a Home Office report which cited show 21 incidents per month during the World Cup period and 44 during the control period – suggesting that football is effective in reducing domestic violence.

But – for the 2010 World Cup, BBC radio show Law in Action – Cambridge statistician Professor Sheila Bird was asked to review the Home Office study.

She reported back that it was “so amateurish and riddled with flaws that it could not be taken seriously.

She explained: “The 30 per cent claim was based on a cherry-picked sample of police districts; it failed to correct for seasonal differences and ignored match days which showed little or no increase in domestic violence”.

Bird also pointed up that Increased police vigilance on match days could result in an increase in reports which didn’t actually represent an increase in violence.

When Carmel Napier, deputy chief constable of Gwent, was confronted by the BBC with evidence the study she was promoting was specious, she replied with the familiar response, ‘If it has saved lives, then it is worth it’.

Expect more versions of this myth as the World Cup continues…..but don’t just sit back and let them get away with it – complain to the BBC or media that is lying, complain to the police if they are lying, and make sure everything you do is in public, on the internet, so they can’t just bury it.

One Response to THE POLICE ARE LYING

Catherine Elvey

July 15, 2014 at 12:37 am

Yes of course it’s rubbish; it really is depressing to see people coming up with some old hat that doesn’t make any sense, and it is relentless and annoying that some people still try to say there is a link between watching sport and violence.

There is certainly evidence that the World Cup and other major sporting events lower suicide rates, for both men and women -see Simon Kuper’s book “Why England Lose”. The nice thing is that the research indicates that the decrease in suicide rates in World Cup years is not dependent on how well a country does in the tournament. Just as well in our case.